Portside Date: August 18, 2016

Author: Becky Bond, contributor

Date of source: August 18, 2016

The Hill

With Donald Trump tanking in the polls, there's room for progressives to simultaneously crush his bid for the presidency while holding Hillary Clinton's feet to the fire on the TPP.

She's now appointed two pro-TPP politicians to key positions on her campaign - Tim Kaine as her Vice President and Ken Salazar to lead her presidential transition team. It's time for progressives who helped Clinton beat Bernie Sanders in the primary to take the lead on holding her accountable.

Progressives who supported Clinton in the primary should use their leverage to ensure Clinton makes good on her vow to stop TPP and keep other promises she made on the campaign trail to win progressive votes. Bernie supporters will have your back, but it's up to you to lead on this one.

It's a serious matter, and it can't wait until after the inauguration. From the perspective of progressives who supported Bernie in the primary, this election is a shotgun wedding. We're going to vote for Clinton because we have to, but the honeymoon ends with the appointment of Salazar.

A former senator and Secretary of the Interior, Salazar was plucked by Clinton from the powerful Washington D.C. influence peddler WilmerHale to run her presidential transition team.

The choice of Salazar is a pretty good sign that as expected we'll be seeing the "revolving door" in full force in a Clinton administration. As head of the transition he'll have enormous influence on who fills thousands of jobs at the White House and federal agencies.

As Senator Elizabeth Warren has forcefully argued, one of the lessons of the Obama administration is clear: "personnel is policy." Who Clinton chooses to help her run the White House may tell us more about her true priorities than promises she made on the campaign trail.

After all, we've already seen her choice of a vice president. Once Democrats prevail on Election Day, we'll have a pro-TPP, pro-Hyde Amendment Vice President. Tim Kaine is the man that Clinton believes is the best person to lead the country, should she for any reason be unable to fulfill the duties of her office.

So to progressives who supported Clinton in the primary? -? labor advocates, environmentalists, immigration reformers, anti-war activists? -? you have a special responsibility to lead efforts to hold your candidate accountable.

Not just on TPP, but on the fight to keep fossil fuels in the ground, dismantle structural racism, stop the deportations of children fleeing violence in Central America, and bring our troops home from U.S. wars of choice in the Middle East.

Like a lot of people who worked hard to win the Democratic nomination for a candidate who would be making very different choices for these key positions, my message to progressives who backed Clinton over Bernie isn't "I told you so." These appointments are totally predictable moves by the Clinton administration.

Progressive supporters of Clinton knew this was coming. 

[Becky Bond was a senior advisor to the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign and is the former president of CREDO SuperPAC.]

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